


The lies we tell

by WatermelonTuesdays



Series: Finding Family [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Jealous Shiro (Voltron), M/M, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Pining, Pining Shiro (Voltron), Pre-Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 06:58:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16969899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatermelonTuesdays/pseuds/WatermelonTuesdays
Summary: Shiro is having a rough go. He's jaded and no longer believes in love, and watching Keith and Acxa's burgeoning relationship is a particular kind of hell.-----“You should really control your expressions better,” Pidge said in a conspiratorial voice beside him.“Oh?” Shiro asked, noncommittal. He knew exactly what she was talking about, but he hadn’t thought it was that noticeable.“Yeah. Unless you want people thinking you hate Acxa.” She paused for a moment, watching the game resume, “Do you hate Acxa?”She said it so conversationally it took Shiro off-guard.“N-no. I don’t hate anyone,” Shiro said, knowing it was a lie because the second he said it his mind supplied a small parade of faces of people (mainly Galra) who he could easily say he hated beyond belief. “Well,” he equivocated, “I don’t hate her, at least.”





	The lies we tell

**Author's Note:**

> Now we get to see what Shiro thinks of the Keith/Acxa pairing! *spoiler alert* he's not very into it.

Love didn’t exist.

Shiro wasn’t exactly sure when he began to believe that; though if he thought about it for more than a passing second he could probably identify the moment down to the very second. It was May 16th, a Saturday, at quarter past 11 at night that the thought first snuck into his mind and started to take root.

Easy to identify because May 15th was the day they announced that Shiro was in the running for pilot of the Kerberos mission. Saturday because Saturday was date night, and he and Adam had gone to a restaurant and made a scene during appetizers, changing their entrees to to-go orders before they were even brought to the table so they could try and hash things out from the comfort of their own home. Quarter past 11 because Adam was strict about bedtimes ever since Shiro was diagnosed and Shiro had taken his time sulking in the shower just to push past his 11 o’clock deadline. It was a small and petty defiance, and it made Shiro feel even worse. 

Adam had pretended to already be asleep when Shiro climbed under the covers, and Shiro obliged him by holding back his customary ‘good night.’ When Shiro leaned his head back against the hard pillow – “it’s better for your spine” – he closed his eyes in a hard press and thought to himself that maybe love didn’t really exist.

At the time he had been thinking of that Hollywood idealization of love, that fairy tale romance where true love trumps all and people who love each other never part, that wide-eyed hopeful dream of love. But after a year as “champion,” a year as “leader,” and a year as “ghost” just to return and find Adam had been added to the list of everything the Galra had taken from Shiro that thought had germinated into a true belief. Slowly the distinction between Hollywood love and love in general had faded away. 

It was a contradiction within him. Because Shiro believed fervently in hope: believed it with every fibre of his being (past and present). He believed that Voltron was the hope of the universe, and that spreading its light to every corner of the stars would bring good things rushing in its wake. He believed that a team of 5 could defeat an army of millions, all they needed was a fighting spirit and a belief in themselves and each other. 

And 5 magic robot lions.

Shiro believed firmly in every inspirational platitude he had ever been given.

But he did not believe in love. Not any more.

For the most part it made no difference in his life. He went about his days the same as ever, and it hardly ever even crossed his mind. 

The only time he felt it was in the mornings, just after his alarm went off, when he would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and feel the emptiness that had clawed away a sizable hole in his chest. He would take slow, deep breaths and feel that void inside him where the hope of love used to live. He would let himself wallow in his own certainty: his past loves were a lie and he would never fall for the charade again.

Eventually he would roll over and haul himself up. Once he started moving he would forget about the hole, forget that love doesn’t exist, and remember that hope for the future was all he needed to get through the day.

So when Keith announced in a low voice, cheeks tinged pink, to the paladins and to Shiro that he was now dating Acxa, Shiro was filled with a peculiar mix of emotions. He was glad for Keith, he wanted to see him happy, and was proud of the small family he seemed to be carving out around him. At the same time he was sad that Keith had not yet learned the cruel reality of love. He regretted that it was a lesson still waiting for him. He was disappointed that Keith had not told him immediately, first and foremost, second only to Krolia. But mainly, Shiro was overwhelmed by a complete and all-encompassing sense of Nothing. He felt nothing. 

Because love was a lie, and romance was a pretense to encourage the survival of the race, and there was nothing in the announcement that could bring him joy or sorrow.

Outwardly, of course, Shiro looked surprised, and then smiled. When it was his turn, he crowded around Keith and gave him a hearty slap to his shoulder, followed by a squeeze and shake that made Keith blush harder from his happiness.

After that, it was hard to keep the sadness out of his eyes when he saw Keith and Acxa together, and they seemed to be together more than they were ever apart. Seeing Acxa beam up at Keith when they walked across the garrison courtyard and he slipped his hand in hers – or seeing their flushed faces when they pulled out of shadowed alcoves pained Shiro. He couldn’t stand to see their happiness, knowing how it would end. He couldn’t bare the disappointment he felt that Keith had not seen the truth, and that he still had so much pain and anguish ahead of him.

The only consolation that he could see was that he had been through it all himself. He could help Keith navigate those waters when he reached the bank and saw there was no bridge to certain happiness at the end of the relationship. Only dull, murky, leech-infested waters.

But Shiro would be there with him. It wouldn’t be so bad for Keith: Shiro would make sure of it.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Shiro watched with dark, brooding eyes as Keith tried for the third time to teach Acxa the rules to basketball. Officially, Shiro was in charge of Keith’s physical therapy and recovery after his crash to Earth months before. But Acxa had insisted on helping before she and Keith had settled into couplehood, and now that they were official there was no getting rid of her. 

“No, you’re travelling!” Keith called after her, jogging to her side and taking the ball from her to demonstrate again how she had to dribble the ball as she moved.

Shiro watched Acxa tease Keith that the game has too many rules, that it would be easier to play it like drixxenball from her home planet, and then playing a twisting, giggling version of keep-away that had Keith lunging and laughing after her, following around the court like a lovesick puppy.

Shiro tried not to scowl, his human hand idly running through Kosmo’s fur as he stared.

He hardly looked when Lance, Pidge, and Kinkaid entered the gym, glancing just long enough to nod to the trio before resettling his gaze on the lovebirds.

Pidge took the seat beside him while the others tried to organize a game of 2 on 2. 

“You’re not going to play?” Pidge asked, though she made it sound more like a statement than a question.

Shiro shrugged what he could with his new prosthetic. “Not feeling like basketball just now.”

Pidge accepted the answer without comment. She reached over to add her hand to the soft fur behind Kosmo’s ears and they pet the cosmic wolf together for a long time.

Acxa seemed to understand the rules much better now that she had competition for Keith’s attention. She always seemed to work better when she was teamed with Keith rather than against him, and Shiro didn’t know if it was because of some innate loyalty on her part, or if friendly competition with her boyfriend stoked her fires enough to make her incautious. 

Shiro averted his eyes when Keith tried to high five Acxa after a particularly good rebound and Acxa took the opportunity to link their fingers and pull Keith dangerously close. He could hear Keith sputter at her boldness, and Lance’s cat-call noises at their antics, and that was bad enough.

“You should really control your expressions better,” Pidge said in a conspiratorial voice beside him.

“Oh?” Shiro asked, noncommittal. He knew exactly what she was talking about, but he hadn’t thought it was that noticeable.

“Yeah. Unless you want people thinking you hate Acxa.” She paused for a moment, watching the game resume, “Do you hate Acxa?”

She said it so conversationally it took Shiro off-guard. 

“N-no. I don’t hate anyone,” Shiro said, knowing it was a lie because the second he said it his mind supplied a small parade of faces of people (mainly Galra) who he could easily say he hated beyond belief. “Well,” he equivocated, “I don’t hate her, at least.”

Pidge sniffed. “Ok. Because I was starting to wonder. It’s just weird; we’ve never seen you act so jealous before.”

Shiro was tempted to hunt down who this ‘we’ was, but he forced himself to focus on the more important news first. “Jealous? I’m not jealous.” It was a ludicrous thought, really. And honestly, he had never known Pidge to be so off the mark.

“No?” 

Shiro snuck a glance over his shoulder at the small girl beside him: child genius, paladin of Voltron, pilot of the green lion, 5 foot nothing and not grown an inch in all her years in space. She saw too much through those fake glasses, but it was almost a comfort to know that even she could be wrong from time to time.

_Almost_ a comfort, because suddenly Shiro felt a shadow of a doubt cloud his mind.

“It’s not that. It’s just…” how to explain to a teenage girl who hasn’t even felt her first love that it was all a futile, hopeless, pointless lie? “… we can’t be distracted now. Earth is safe for now, but there’s still the rest of the universe out there waiting for us to save it.”

Pidge’s hard stare was hidden behind the glare of light on her glasses. “So you think she’s a distraction. You think she’ll ruin Voltron?” 

Shiro grit his teeth. She blasted through his lie so easily.

“Well, no… it’s just…” Shiro rubbed the back of his head and grinned down at Pidge as if to say ‘just ignore me,’ “I guess I don’t know what I’m saying.” He forced a sheepish laugh. “I just worry about them getting too attached when there’s still so much left to do.” 

That was a little closer to the truth, and Pidge seemed to pick up on that. 

“Wow, you really are a bummer sometimes, Shiro.” She said, putting her head in her hand and looking back to the game. 

“Yeah. Sorry.”

Pidge shrugged and watched Lance run up the length of the court after Acxa, yelling about travelling. They sat together in silence until the end of the game. 

~*~*~*~*~*~

Shiro was not having as easy of a time controlling his face as he had expected. It was hard. And getting harder. 

He really couldn’t help it. Every time he saw Keith and Acxa together he felt a stab of pain for himself and for the both of them. Their pain was inevitable, and it hurt to watch them be happy now. Shiro knew how every moment of happiness now would just amplify the pain to come. He just couldn’t watch it.

It didn’t help that Pidge’s observation, though still wrong, was weighing on Shiro’s brain. The more he though about it the less he could deny it: it looked like jealousy. He completely understood now why Pidge had thought that that was what was going on. He was acting jealous. He was acting bitter, and jealous, and maybe a bit possessive. 

But knowing what it looked like didn’t make it any easier to change the appearance. 

So Shiro did the next best thing he could think of: he avoided Keith. Like the plague.

It was easy to do, all he had to do was slip into work-mode and he was busy enough to last him from dawn to dusk. Keith was busy too, taking on more and more responsibilities as his recovery progressed. In fact, it was so easy that Shiro realized one day when he passed Keith wordlessly in the hallway that he had not seen the other man in nearly 3 weeks. He had not seen him alone in even longer.

“Keith,” Shiro said, stopping mid-stride to turn and call after Keith’s retreating back.

Keith kept walking, as if he hadn’t heard Shiro’s call, so he repeated himself only louder. Keith stopped at that, and turned slow enough that Shiro furrowed his brow, reading tension in Keith’s movement.

“What’s going on, Keith?” he asked.

Keith looked at him hard for a moment, taking no step to close the gaping space between them.

“So you’re talking to me now?” Keith asked in lieu of an answer.

Shiro blinked, surprised at the simmering heat behind Keith’s words. “What? Of course I’m talking to you. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. Why haven’t you been?”

“Keith… I don’t know-”

“You haven’t said a single word to me in over a month, Shiro. You’re telling me you haven’t noticed?”

Though Keith was right, Shiro still felt the urge to defend himself. He had to maintain the pretense that he was fine, that things were normal. “I’ve been busy, sure. So have you. It’s not like you’ve been banging at my door to talk to me.” 

It was childish to throw the blame back on Keith like that, but it was all Shiro could think to do.

The words seemed to snap something in Keith, however, because a moment later he stomped up to Shiro until he was close enough for Shiro to read the hurt and betrayal in his eyes in great detail. 

“I’ve done all but bust down your door, Shiro. I’ve tried to talk to you, I tried messaging you. Hell, I even tried scheduling a meeting with you. Two weeks ago. You bailed on me at the last minute.”

“S-something came-”

“Something came up. I know. Vanessa told me. I had to heard from Lance’s sister that my best friend can’t bother to see me.” Keith’s eyes narrowed into a deadly glare, “do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

“K-Keith…” Shiro felt wide-eyed and broken at Keith’s accusations. He was filled with a regret so strong it hurt. It physically hurt in his gut. “I’m sorry,” he breathed around the pain.

“You’re sorry?” Keith’s voice was wild with anger, but the storm raged itself out in an instant. His next words were small and shaking, like a baby bird’s, “Don’t be sorry, tell me what I did wrong.”

“Keith…” there was so much emotion in Shiro’s voice, wrapped up in the one word, he couldn’t even begin to unpack it all.

“Is it Acxa?” 

For a moment the floor fell out from under Shiro’s feet. 

“Wha-what? Acxa?”

“You’ve been distant ever since I started seeing her. Do you not like her?”

“No, it’s not that…”

“Then what? Pidge said something about you think she’s a distraction?”

Shiro tried to get ahead of this, but every time he opened his mouth Keith laid another offence against him. 

“No, that was taken out of conte-”

“Then what is it, Shiro? Is it me?” 

Shiro was reeling at the mess of emotions Keith was throwing at him, his tone changed with each question, leaving Shiro no time to adjust. But at that last one, Shiro snapped.

He reached out with firm hands and held Keith at both shoulders, steadying Keith through physical connection.

“Never, Keith. It could never be you.” His grip loosened slightly, “And it’s not Acxa either. Not really. I’m just… worried about how this might end, once we get back out there and start this war back up.” The lie left a bad aftertaste on it’s way out, worse than when he had said it to Pidge. “I just don’t want to see you to get hurt. Either of you,” he tacked on the last part as an afterthought. 

Keith sniffed and looked away for a moment.

“Yeah, ok. I guess I get that.”

“But I really have been busy.” A weak smile flashed over Keith’s face, but it was chased quickly away.

“I thought…” Keith sighed, leaning fractionally into Shiro’s grip. “No, it’s dumb.”

“Keith,” the name was a whisper on the air. Keith could always tell Shiro anything.

“I thought you didn’t like her. Maybe hated her. And it sucked, you know? Because… because you’re my family. It means something if you can’t get along with her.”

Keith’s eyes were damp with unshed tears when he looked up at Shiro again. Then he said in a voice so low Shiro almost couldn’t hear it, “I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Shiro’s sigh was a long exhale of breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “Keith, no, you could never disappoint me. I’ve just been… I’ve been thinking… how…” Shiro gripped Keith’s shoulders a little tighter again, and searched for the words in Keith’s eyes. “… I want you to be happy. Now, but later too.”

The moment that hung between them was heavy with unsaid words that Shiro couldn’t begin to grapple with. 

Keith broke the silence with a smile and a shrug, “I am happy. But I’ll be happier if I could see more of you.” 

He poked Shiro playfully in the chest and the moment evaporated easily around them. Shiro laughed and released Keith’s shoulders. They parted ways soon after, Shiro heading for his office, Keith heading to meet Acxa at the mess hall.

As he walked away, Shiro felt his tongue move around his mouth, tasting all the lies he just told. He had been so close to confessing the truth, to finally laying it all out there for Keith to see. But the strange thing was, the only reason he didn’t say it was that suddenly his one truth felt false. 

With Keith’s bright blue eyes staring in his own, and those firm shoulders supporting Shiro as much as the touch had supported Keith, love didn’t seem as much of a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> 2 MORE SLEEPS! Ahhh!!!! And THEN what am I going to do with my life!? (Answer: finish all of the hundreds of fics I've started or mapped out.... I've got so many fics, guys...)
> 
> This fic is a more Sheithy than the last one. Shiro is a gem, and I love him to bits. It hurt to make him so down in the dumps, but he's been through a lot guys, and he's 100% the type to be going through some dark shit and not say a thing to anyone. 
> 
> So the good news is that I am pretty well done the last fic for this series. The only question is whether it will have a sex scene, but the chances are looking pretty good on that too.
> 
> Send me kudos and comments because knowing people like what I'm doing gives me inspiration to keep doing it. And I legit have SO much planned that I want to share with ya'll. 
> 
> Tumblr: WatermelonTuesdays  
> Twitter: WTuesdays


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